Notes from a happy biker

andrea 신영 kim
Jul 23, 2017 · 5 min read

~“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.”~

Flowers from the rose garden I discovered on my bike trail

Last week, my earphones broke and I’ve been waiting to save up for a nicer pair. The prospect of being music-less for a few weeks, though, has left me slightly annoyed and missing the good old days singing on the sidewalks, and I feared feeling a void in my daily commutes to work and school.

But sure enough, every change in our lives opens up the possibility of other cool things to happen if we just choose to see it. The world offers unlimited ways to keep our minds stimulated and satisfied, as long as we notice what’s around, and we put the effort in being creative with how we engage with it.

So, around the same time, I got a bike, which turned out to be the best decision I’ve made in a while. It’s too easy to slip into what’s mindlessly comfortable especially after a long day of work/school: watching TV, scrolling through social media, going down YouTube rabbit holes. A week could go by without much happening, it’s just killing time, really.

Thankfully, the smallest of things could change how we experience our daily lives and generate energy. Like, riding a bike!

The realm of possibility expanded for which cafe to go to, which park to visit, when to run an errand. I have 20 minutes before class? Suddenly, it’s a game to grab an iced coffee and make it on time. Navigating new roads and exhausting my body creates a frenzy of decision-making, and I’m left feeling like something is always happening. Everywhere I go, I arrive with a layer of sweat. But to feel my skin sticky and my muscles a bit sore is to feel alive. The coffee tastes better, I’m more talkative, and every air-conditioned room I walk into feels like a well deserved reward.

So, today was a lazy Saturday morning (I guess, now, it was last week). After a cigarette or two, and a hearty glass of water, I decided to do something with myself. I read Jenny Odell’s article about “how to do nothing,” in which she so glamorously enjoys her own company in nature, and I figured I’d allow myself the same pleasures.

I went on the Bolin Creek Bike trail, just behind my apartment, and was dazzled by the beauty of the place. After biking a few minutes, I took my shoes and socks off, and tiptoed to the edge of the creek. Pockets of light streamed through the trees, and speckled the water with glitter. For a moment, I had discovered Narnia, Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, a castle in the sky. Really, all the emotions associated with discovering a fantastical land flooded my heart, and I couldn’t stop taking photos of the place. The water was cold, the rocks and sand crunching under the weight of my tiny feet. I found a seat on a rock, and meditated to the sound of running water.

Though I’ve lived in North Carolina for three years, something about being trapped on campus has made me so oblivious to the nature tucked in the corners of the streets. I continued my bike route, and lo and behold, I ended up discovering a rose garden of my own, just like that of the article that inspired me to get out of the house. I returned home with refreshed spirits and a sense of gratitude for the state I get the chance to live in.

Odell’s article highlights the value of escaping the rapid connectivity of our daily lives in favor of self-preservation and sensitivity. In a sense, taking a pause, and doing nothing is an act of rebellion against our information-driven society of constant processing. She talks about how before analysis and judgement, we need observation and attention (to sounds, to our thoughts) and once we start listening, we’d realize how much there is to notice.

This got me thinking that perhaps the granularity of attention we achieve outward also extends inward, so that as the perceptual details of our environment unfold in surprising ways, so too do our own intricacies and contradictions.

I’m reminded of a scene from My Dinner With Andre that I keep coming back to:

Andre: What does it do to us, Wally, living in an environment where something as massive as the seasons or winter or cold, don’t in any way affect us? I mean, were animals after all. I mean… what does that mean? I think that means that instead of living under the sun and the moon and the sky and the stars, we’re living in a fantasy world of our own making.

Wally: Yeah, but I mean, I would never give up my electric blanket, Andre. I mean, because New York is cold in the winter. I mean, our apartment is cold! It’s a difficult environment. I mean, our life is tough enough as it is. I’m not looking for ways to get rid of a few things that provide relief and comfort. I mean, on the contrary, I’m looking for more comfort because the world is very abrasive. I mean, I’m trying to protect myself because, really, there’s these abrasive beatings to be avoided everywhere you look!

Andre: But, Wally, don’t you see that comfort can be dangerous? I mean, you like to be comfortable and I like to be comfortable too, but comfort can lull you into a dangerous tranquility.

For me, the glimmer of true emotional self-sufficiency and creative energy has come from these moments of feeling connected to my environment, which often comes from navigating inconveniences in life. It’s easy to get sucked into the rhetoric of productivity and convenience, the need to capitalize on how we spend our time; perhaps, it’s even necessary some times at this point. But, it’s humbling to know how something so simple like riding a bike could affect how I experience this. I think my mind is slowly deconstructing the binary of activity and passivity, understanding that they’re really just two of the same. In any case, the article itself provides a better argument (than I could synthesize here) for all these ideas and more.

Anyway, I’m looking towards creating my own value system for spending time, and the act of nothingness has definitely been a first step. Oh, also, at the end of my bike trail, I discovered this cute cafe in which I’m happily writing this blog post now, a week later. Cheers!

The lovely outdoor patio of Caffe Driade in Chapel Hill
andrea 신영 kim

Written by

comparative media studies at MIT, Research assistant at Open Documentary Lab, documentary filmmaker, producer at the Calla Campaign

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